Hangman's Curse Read online

  He started counting out the big bills. “I’ll take it.”

  “You’ll take half. The rest is spoken for.”

  “Okay, half.”

  “We gotta go,” said Luke. “If I get caught skipping class one more time, somebody’s gonna get wise.”

  “Go out the back way,” she instructed. “Use the alley.”

  The two kids ducked out the back, leaving Nancy and Marv alone to close the drug deal.

  “So, fifty grams,” said Nancy, taking a triple-beam balance from a cupboard.

  “Wow,” said Marv, “nice scale.” Then he noticed the “SCHOOL DISTRICT 212” label still attached to the side and chuckled.

  She smiled. “I have friends in the school district.”

  He boasted, “So have I. I work Mannesmann High, Cleveland, Kennedy, Lincoln Junior High, even Dwight Elementary.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “You do get around.” She placed a coffee filter on the scale and began carefully pouring out the powder, watching for the scale to tip at fifty grams. “So how come I never heard of you before?”

  “I’m smart,” he replied. “How come I never heard of you before?”

  She stopped pouring. She had fifty grams. “I’m smart, too.”

  She carefully poured the powder into a bag, then waited for Marv to place the hundred-dollar bills in her hand. When he did so, she gave him the bag.

  “Thanks,” he said. “It’ll take about a week to sell this, and then I’ll—”

  There was a commotion on the back porch. A door banging open. Stumbling footsteps. An angry voice.

  Marv was about to bolt for the front door, but Nancy said, “It’s Lou.”

  The back door burst open and the two high schoolers stumbled into the kitchen, shoved along at gunpoint by a big, stubbly-faced man.

  “Lou!” said Nancy. “What gives?”

  Lou shoved the two kids up against the counter and then growled in a roughneck, East Coast accent, “Found these two outside, snooping through the kitchen window with these!” He threw a tiny video camera and a set of earphones on the kitchen table.

  The back door burst open and the two high schoolers stumbled into the kitchen, shoved along at gunpoint by a big, stubbly-faced man.

  Nancy looked at the gadgets, then at the kids, in horror. “We heard a rumor about some kids working undercover. It’s you?”

  Lou pointed the gun at Marv. “ ’kay, Marv—or whoever you are—party’s over. Better join your friends.” He motioned with the gun toward the frightened Luke and Leah.

  “What are you talking about?” said Marv, half raising his hands.

  “They brought you here with ’em, and guess what? They’re working for the cops. That means you’re working for the cops.”

  Marv was totally flustered. “No, man, I don’t know anything about this.”

  Nancy’s eyes were suddenly cold and cruel. “You were good. Real good. You had us fooled!”

  “But, but I’m not with them!” Marv protested.

  Lou came closer, raising the gun to the level of Marv’s eyes. “Oh, riiiight, like I don’t know a sting operation when I see it? Open the jacket. You’re probably wired.”

  Marv spread his jacket open. “No! No wires! No microphones, nothing! I’m clean, I tell you. I don’t know these kids.”

  Lou was insulted. He spoke sideways to Nancy, “He says he don’t know ’em!”

  “I mean—”

  “You drive up with ’em, you come into the house with ’em, and you don’t know ’em? Eh, give me a break!”

  Nancy glared at Marv in murderous rage. “So what are we going to do, Lou?”

  Lou grabbed the video camera and earphones off the table, dashed them to the floor, and shattered them under his heel. He grabbed Leah by the arm as she screamed in pain, then aimed the gun at her. “How much do the cops know? How much have you told ’em?”

  She didn’t answer, but only squirmed in his iron grip, her face contorted with pain.

  “Let her go,” Luke blurted. “We haven’t told them anything. We were supposed to take the recording back to the drug task force.” Then he added with a tone of warning, “And if they don’t hear from us within an hour they’ll come looking for us.”

  “Elijah,” the girl screamed, “don’t tell them that!”

  Lou nodded, a sly smile forming on his lips. “Hey, that gives us time, doesn’t it Elijah? So what’s your name, sweetheart?”

  “Elisha.” She pronounced it Eleesha. “Elisha Springfield.”

  “So Elijah must be your brother.”

  Elijah confessed, “That’s right.”

  Lou smiled menacingly. “So it’s all in the family.” He waved the gun at Marv. “So who’s this, your cousin?”

  “You gotta believe me,” Marv pleaded. “I’m not with them! I’m just here to do business!”

  Lou aimed the gun in his face and pulled the hammer back. “You got two seconds to convince me.”

  “Jackie Morelli, over in the central district—you can call him. He knows me.”

  Lou shook his head. “Don’t know him.”

  “Eddie Baylor? Runs Hogie’s Tavern over on Torrance Boulevard.”

  Lou was unimpressed. “You gotta be making this up.”

  Marv was getting desperate. His voice was rising in pitch and he was talking a lot faster. “Okay, okay. Jimmy Dorning, over at—”

  “Where are you getting these nobody names?”

  “Just let me finish! He lives right next to Lincoln High School. He’s my contact over there and we’ve made good money—I’m talking thousands, tens of thousands, and no ripoffs.”

  Lou cocked his head slightly as if he were just beginning to believe. “What about Steve Vernon? You know him?”

  “I know him. I don’t like him, but I know him. He’s buying from Gomez and trying to get Gomez to cut me out.”

  Lou raised one eyebrow as if impressed. “You know Gomez?”

  “Yeah, you kidding? Everybody knows Gomez.”

  “You work for him?”

  Marv hesitated to answer. Lou brought the muzzle of the gun a little closer. “I don’t ask questions twice, kid.”

  “Okay! Okay!” Marv finally burst out. “I work for him!”

  “How long?”

  “A year. Maybe two.”

  “How’d you meet up with him?”

  “He helped me out.”

  “Yeah, just like all his little flunkies. So where’s his lab?”

  “He has an old rental on Taylor Avenue.”

  Lou’s grip on the gun tightened. “He’s at his mother’s place!”

  “No, no, no!” Marv raised his hands pleadingly. “He moved just last week! Go ahead, check it out! 401 Taylor Avenue!”

  “So if you work for Gomez, why are you buying from us?”

  “Because . . .” Marv couldn’t finish.

  “You’re setting us up!”

  “NO! NO! I just . . . I just gotta get away from Gomez, that’s all.” Marv began to wilt. “I can’t take it anymore.”

  “So go home.”

  Marv seemed close to tears. “Don’t have the bread. Gomez takes it all.”

  Lou eyed Marv curiously. “You mean, you do all the selling, but Gomez takes the money?”

  “That’s the deal. He puts me up, gives me a bed, maybe some food, and I work for him.”

  Nancy’s voice was almost compassionate. “Dealing drugs just to stay alive. So what happens to Gomez if you get caught?”

  Marv shrugged. “I dunno. Says he doesn’t know me, I guess.”

  Lou sniffed in disgust. “Some friend.”

  Marv wiped a tear from his eye. “Yeah. Some friend. I’m just trying to get out on my own, that’s all. I wouldn’t even cut in on Gomez’s turf. I’d go somewhere else. I just need something to get started, you know?”

  Lou thought it over for several torturous seconds. Finally, he relaxed and raised the muzzle of the gun toward the ceiling. “Okay, Marv, okay. I guess you do k
now some people.”

  CRASH! The front door caved in and the house filled with green-jacketed, helmeted police, all leveling guns. “FREEZE! POLICE! ON THE FLOOR! ON THE FLOOR! GET DOWN! SPREAD ’EM!”

  Nancy screamed, Lou dropped his gun, the kids fell to the floor and cowered. Marv ran for the back door, but Elijah Springfield hooked his feet in a leg lock and brought him down. More cops came storming in the back door, yelling, shoving, grabbing, flipping Marv over, holding him down, cuffing him. “DOWN! DOWN! DOWN! C’MON, MOVE IT!”

  They slapped handcuffs on Lou and Nancy, then on Elijah and Elisha. In mere seconds, all five were facedown on the floor, subdued and guarded by the armed police now towering over them.

  An officer found the fifty grams of methamphetamine in the pocket of Marv’s jacket. They took him first. With a huge officer grabbing him under each arm, he sailed up from the floor and through the house before he could even get his feet under him. He went out through the front door, the sweeping blue and red lights of the police cars flashing across his dazed face, and then he was gone.

  The door slammed shut.

  “Don’t move,” a burly sergeant warned the others.

  Lou and Nancy didn’t move. They just waited. Elijah and Elisha remained on their bellies, looking even more dour than usual.

  Outside, the doors of a police car slammed shut and the vehicle sped away, its lights making one final sweep through the living-room windows. Seconds later, a police officer poked his head in the door and said, “Suspect is en route.”

  Lou and Nancy, still facedown and handcuffed, smiled at each other.

  Elijah sighed with relief and muttered, “All right!”

  Sergeant Bill Perkins removed his helmet. “Whew! You guys okay?”

  Lou moaned a bit—he was kidding. “I think I’m going to be sore tomorrow.”

  Officer Jim Dunlop got out his set of keys and unlocked all the handcuffs. Lou, Nancy, Elijah, and Elisha, wrists free, got to their feet.

  “Good work,” said Perkins. Then he called toward the pantry, “Did we get all that on tape?”

  The pantry door swung open, and Officer Kyle Warner, video camera in hand, made an “okay” sign with his thumb and finger. “Great performance, guys.”

  Perkins spoke into his portable radio, “Okay, we have the Gomez location: 401 Taylor.” He signed off and smiled. “Our friend Mr. Gomez is in for a visit, along with Morelli, Baylor, Dorning, and, uh . . .”

  Officer Warner helped him out. “Steve Vernon. We needed a lead on that guy.”

  “And now we’ve got it!” Perkins extended his hand for a congratulatory shake. “Nate, Sarah, thanks a lot.”

  Nate and Sarah Springfield, who had been posing as “Lou” and “Nancy” for the past two months, shook his hand.

  “But Nate,” said Perkins, who really was from the East Coast, “the Philadelphia accent could use a little work.”

  “You’d know,” Nate responded with a laugh, his own accent reflecting his Montana roots.

  Perkins shook hands with Nate and Sarah’s sixteen-year-old twins, Elijah and Elisha. “You okay?”

  They were both breathing a lot easier and smiling for the first time, as if they didn’t really want the whole world to drop dead after all.

  “Oh, we’re intact,” said Elijah, gathering up the pieces of his shattered fake video camera. “I worked three days on this.”

  Elisha removed a black wig and shook loose her shoulder-length blond hair. “But what about Marv? What’s going to happen to him?”

  “We’re making it look as much like a real drug bust as possible,” Perkins said.

  “You had me convinced,” Nate said.

  “Well, hopefully, word will get around that Marv’s out for good, and that should keep the local gangs and drug dealers from trying to come after him. We have a family from one of the churches who is willing to take him in on a mentor program. It’s a strict environment with plenty of rules, but that’s why the prosecutor’s willing to work with us. It works.” Perkins smiled. “A strict environment with total accountability, but with the love of a family and the love of God.”

  “Has anyone been able to find Marv’s real family?” Sarah asked.

  “We’ll need Marv to help us out on that one.” Perkins wagged his head in dismay. “Sometimes runaways have a home to return to, and sometimes . . . well, we’ll just have to see.”

  “It’s just so hard to believe,” said Nate. “How old is Marv, anyway?”

  “He can’t be more than fourteen,” said Perkins. “Gomez finds them young, hungry, and alone.”

  “Well, he won’t be hungry and alone anymore.”

  Perkins smiled. “Not if we can help it.”

  “So . . . ,” Nate’s eyes scanned the room. “Let’s go, folks. We need to give this house back to the owners so they can get back to renting it. Gather up the gear—and whose cat is that?”

  While Perkins and Dunlop discussed who might own the cat, the Springfields opened cupboards and drawers, removing dishes, silverware, groceries, and dishtowels they’d placed there to make the kitchen look lived in. They also removed microphones strategically hidden behind the window shades, the ceiling light fixture, and under the counter.

  “Oh, by the way, Nate,” said Sergeant Perkins, “Morgan called. He needs you to call him back right away.”

  “Thanks,” Nate replied, stepping out onto the back porch and opening his cell phone. He punched in a number, the phone beeping with each entry.

  A woman’s voice answered after one ring. “Veritas Project.”

  “This is Nate Springfield.”

  “Ah, hello, Nate. Hang on, I’ll connect you.”

  In only a few seconds, a man’s voice came on the phone. “Nate. How’d it go?”

  Nate looked toward the kitchen and the cleanup going on. “We have Marv.”

  “Wonderful!”

  “He was the last drug slave working for Gomez, so that clears that out. And now we finally got the information we needed on Gomez and the others, so there goes the drug ring— hopefully.”

  “Excellent! And what do you think of their antidrug program?”

  Nate smiled. “The reports we got were on the money. The police and prosecutors are joining up with the community and the churches too, and they’re working the problem at a heart level. I guess they’re finally starting to see that if you change the heart, the life will change with it. They’ve seen it work.”

  “Think it’ll work for Marv?”

  “Well . . .” Nate gave it some thought. “It worked for those other two kids Gomez owned. As for Marv, well, we’ve gotten to know him a while, and I think he has a good chance of turning things around. We’ve got a Christian family lined up to take him in. We’ll just have to let God do the rest from there.”

  “So the Truth works.”

  Nate had to chuckle. “Well, yeah, if you give it a chance. The problem is, if you really want the Truth, then you have to have God along with it, and that gets a little sticky. If you can persuade the courts and communities to give God’s ways a try, then yeah, the Truth works—and that’s what I intend to report to the President.”

  “Good enough. Now get ready for another one. We just got word of something brewing in Baker, Washington. Some kids are getting sick and demented, and no one knows why. Could be drugs, could be toxic contamination, could be a disease—or it could be something nobody’s even thought of. Drug Enforcement’s been called, and so have Environmental Protection and the Centers for Disease Control, but they’re all backlogged and it’s going to take them weeks to get on it. Nate, the President wants you in Baker now. There are . . . well, let’s say there are certain undercurrents at that school, certain issues that the other agencies won’t be looking for. The President is counting on you to get this thing solved before these other people have a chance to muddle it all up with politics and press releases. As always, Nate, for the record . . .”

  “I know,” Nate had heard this disclaim
er so often he had it memorized. “The President wants to know the reasons, not just the facts. The Veritas Project has nothing to do with his administration. The job is strictly unofficial, strictly up to me if I want to take it.”

  “You’ve got it.” Morgan laughed.

  Nate took out his pen and pad. “Go ahead.”

  “We were contacted by a counselor named Tom Gessner from the high school. . . .”

  Shortly afterward, Nate read from his notes, sharing the potential new assignment with his family as they stood in the now-empty kitchen.

  Sarah was intrigued. “There’s definitely a spiritual aspect to it.”

  Elijah looked a little “iffy” about it. “Yeah, but I’ll bet it means going to school again.”

  Elisha wrinkled her nose. “Another school case?”

  “Ehh, so whatza matta?” Nate asked, his East Coast accent returning. “You got somethin’ against school?”

  “Oh, Dad, pull-eeezzz!”

  2

  the ghost and

  the angel

  Nate Springfield was tall but not imposing, strong but not brutish, the kind of man who could have played the part of a quiet but intense town marshal in an old western movie—he even wore the jeans, lamb-collared coat, and Stetson hat to convey the image. He loved his family and loved being home, and he counted it fortunate that, when the unusual work of The Veritas Project required a bit of traveling, the whole family traveled together. Yesterday, they had helped the police crack open a drug ring in Montague, Oregon—and examined whether or not the police and the community had an antidrug program that really worked. Today, he had an appointment with a competent but somewhat anxious high school counselor in the town of Baker, Washington—and exactly what The Project was about to encounter, he could only guess.

  He was clean-shaven and recently showered—no more of the “Lou” image, at least for now—as he stepped out of his car and quietly surveyed the Baker High School campus, as old as Baker itself but recently rebuilt. What was once an old brick and lap-sided schoolhouse was now a modern structure with computerized classrooms, wide open hallways, a vast cafeteria and commons, covered walkways, hedges, planting beds, and a marvelous gym and athletic facility. Classes were in session, so the campus was quiet, with hardly a body visible except through some of the classroom windows. The place looked orderly and peaceful, just as most high schools in most small towns did.